Hold On
by Zephyr5
Summary: Seifer never betrayed Squall, or SeeD - he protected them the only way he could. Male x Male relationship. Mild spoilers for game plot.


Disclaimers: Final fantasy © Squaresoft etc. Lyrics from 911's album 'Moving On' the song is 'Hold On' – mistakes in the lyrics can be blamed on whoever submitted them ;p

Warnings: very, very mild yaoi – two guys kissing is the furthest it goes, but if that squicks you out, then don't read it o.O um…some speculation over Seifer's motives and actions etc.

Spoilers: um, well if you haven't played the game or had someone give you a plot synopsis of the game...dammit, go play the game already!

AN: Been dredging through my files, so yes, this is a piece written a loooong while ago. Anyone wondering about my longer series posted up here, don't worry, I will get back around to working on them at some point in the future – work (and life in general) is just a bit hectic at the minute, and the muses are playing with new toys.

**Hold On**

I watch him, sleeping soundly despite my lingering presence beyond the open window. Anyone else and he'd be awake in an instant, but I'm one of the privileged few he identifies as 'safe'. Maybe that's not such a good thing considering the circumstances…

_Moonlight streets on your soft skin as you sleep tonight_

The new scar across your face stands out, dark and harsh in the moonlight. My fingers automatically caress it's twin, hidden in shadow, across my own brow. The sheets across your slumbering form, already pushed down to your waist in the early warmth of the summer, shift as you turn restlessly, one arm spreading across onto the side where I would normally lie. Does it search for me? Is that why you are restless tonight? You who normally sleep so peacefully.

_These fallen dreams as I count every breath you breathe_

Or maybe you sense my presence. Are you wondering, in the depths of whatever dream holds you in its thrall, why I do not come to you? Ah, but this will tear us both to pieces, my 'betrayal'. Can you fight me? Can I fight you? And, after it is all over, will you ever trust me again?

_I can't believe that we are standing on different sides_

But she said that she would have one of us, somehow. I couldn't bear to think of her taking you and making you her marionette, whilst the whole of Garden knows I am headstrong and wilful… Just the sort to abandon his 'family' and take up with an evil sorceress offering grand illusions of power. I'm not a complete fool. I know very well that she offers nothing real, but I also know that she _will_ have either me or Squall, and whilst I might appear to go willingly, I'm clinging to the hope that I can resist her control enough that Squall can defeat me. I would willingly go to hell for him…I just hope I'm able to claw my way back for the same reason.

_The cold reality, cause we live in the same world living separate lives – oh_

The sun is just breaking over the horizon when I finally leave for my own room. They will come for me soon, to take me to a detention cell, believing foolishly that mere metal can keep me from my objective…

"Seifer…?" I halt, straightening from my crouch, eyes closing in emotional pain. It seems I lingered too long…maybe deliberately… I turn, seeing Squall leaning out of the open window. He's paused to pull on the familiar leather pants I note, but hasn't yet gotten around to covering up that delicious chest of his. A bemused expression hovers at the corner of his eyes as he squints towards me against the early dawn light.

Still, I can't find it within me to deny myself these last moments, so precious, so innocent of what is to come. I walk back over to the window, catching whatever question he was going to ask in a deep and lingering kiss. Hot moisture is suddenly running down my cheeks…Shit, I'm crying. I don't want to think that I'm gonna lose this forever, even if it is to protect him. He's not ready for another emotional upheaval of this size. There are still nights when he tosses and turns, writhing in my arms and moaning Ellone's name. Damn her! All of this, _all_ of it, is her fault.

"Squall…" I force myself to pull away, holding his face so that I can be sure he is listening. "Never, ever doubt that I love you. Whatever happens." His eyes narrow. For all he rarely says anything, Squall is not stupid, and he knows that I know something is going to happen. But I shush his questions with another, shorter kiss. "I love you." Then, fortuitously for me, a knock on the door distracts him just long enough for me to dart out of sight.

"Seifer…?" And that's the last time we speak as lovers…

* * *

I waltz into the cell ahead of the two Galbadian goons hovering behind me. For their benefit I kick the prone Squall in the stomach. It looks painful, how I hook my leg beneath him so that the kick appears to have propelled him upwards slightly, and still is painful, for a grimace flits across his face. But it's not as painful as I could have made it, had I really meant to hurt him.

_We gotta hold on (hold on)_

With a curt gesture I dismiss the smirking guards. They go willingly, probably to report straight back to Ultemecia. I stopped thinking of her as Edea, or matron, once I knew the truth. There's nothing of the woman who raised us all left on the surface. Beneath Ultemecia's control…? Maybe. Hyne knows the woman had a backbone of iron to stand up to Adel when she was searching for Ellone.

_We can make it through the storm_

Squall is retching, bringing up nothing but bile. It's not nice to see him in such obvious distress, but there is no blood, so I do have the comfort of knowing that nothing vital was damaged by that damn ice shard. Hah, if I'd had the chance to warn him about Rinoa beforehand, maybe he would've let the naïve brat get her comeuppance. Then again, this is Squall, so maybe not.

_Baby it's been so long (so long)_

As his heaves turn to deep breaths, I kneel beside him, gathering him into my arms. Fresh tears trace their way down my face as he presses himself closer. He understands. He's probably already figured out my motives for joining 'her' as well. No words pass between us. None are needed. Just raw emotion filling the tiny cell with a jumble of feeling. He still loves me… The words fill my mind like a mantra, cleansing my thoughts of Ultemecia's dark taint and soothing the anxieties and seeds of doubt she worked so hard to plant. Even after all this, he still loves me.

_Since the feeling was so right_

Surely, if our love can endure this, it can endure the rest? I pray to Hyne that's the case. After all, it was SeeD who attacked first at Deling City. But soon I will have to first torture Squall – no big deal, he has a high tolerance for pain, and I've re-wired the rack anyway – and then launch missiles at Garden. I just pray I can play events out so that Squall can lead the others and save at least Balamb Garden… Trabia hasn't really got a chance, and their deaths will weigh on my soul forever because their only involvement in this is Selphie. How many friends will she lose I wonder?

_I know we can make it strong_

My maudlin thoughts have depressed the atmosphere and Squall shifts to look at me anxiously, only a flicker in the depths of his sapphire eyes revealing that the shoulder still pains him. I'd be surprised if it didn't. The injury was inflicted less than half a day ago, and healed only a few hours ago. He's lucky he didn't bleed to death, but then, I wouldn't have let that happen. Probably the reason Ultemecia kept me busy running petty errands for what seemed like forever. I can only hope that letting him go so long without treatment was all she did.

"What's wrong?"

_For I have seen the signs_

I lean down and attempt to kiss the question out of his mind, but Squall is persistent as ever. I sigh.

"This is just the beginning." A frown forms on my lover's face, an expression so familiar that I could draw it from memory. "There's going to be a missile strike on Trabia and Balamb Gardens." His expression is such that I close my eyes to avoid it. That's it. Now he hates me. I tilt my head back in a vain effort to stop the tears that threaten to spill forth.

_In my heart you still belong_

A faint rustle of fabric is all the warning I have before the comforting feel of a leather-clad hand brushes across my cheek. Squall shifts in my arms, leaning up to wrap his arms around me, resting his chin on my shoulder so that his breath tickles my ear as he speaks.

"It's alright. I know you don't want to do it. But if you didn't, someone else would." He's right, as usual. Besides, I had my GFs do some surreptitious rearranging of the missiles. Half of those aimed at Trabia are duds, and the error margin is as wide as I dared put it. Balamb will just have to hope that Squall and the others can work miracles… I will, of course, give them all the aid I dare, but I'm walking a fine line with how far I push Ultemecia. As soon as she feels I have outlived my usefulness, I'm as good as dead. I don't tell him that though. Instead I pull him closer into my chest, as though trying to pull him into me, or me into him, and quietly explain what I know of the missile base layout, security and a few interesting rumours I've heard about the Gardens.

_Gotta keep holding on_

* * *

_Oh we gotta hold on_

And of course, the next time I saw him was when I led the Galbadian army, and Galbadia Garden, against the newly mobile Balamb Garden, over the sea just off the Cape of Good Hope.

_We've been so blind to let the passing time just slip by_

That battle took its toll on all of them, I could see it in their faces. Somewhere, somehow Ellone had managed to communicate who Edea was to them. I remember being too slow to dodge a simple attack from Squall, a blow that would have decapitated me had he not managed to turn the blade at the last moment. As it was, I was knocked cold, and the next thing I knew, Ultemecia's chill touch was running over my soul, and everyone was on the floor.

_All we've sacrificed just washed away like a turning tide_

Everything was hazy from that point. Ultemecia must have taken her opportunity to really get her claws into my mind, because I had no will left. None. Oh I was there, struggling to escape her control the way a butterfly beats against a window in its efforts to reach the light. I had about as much success…

_I sit alone and look up into the open skies_

Time passed in a blur. I vaguely remember destroying Odin, only to be wounded by Gilgamesh, before snatching Rinoa and throwing her to Adel. And then…threatening Ellone, and time compression, where Ultemecia's grip finally weakened enough for me to escape her control.

_I finally realise oh we've got to fight to keep this love alive_

And then it was all over. Time was splintering into a thousand fragments, threatening to leave me forever lost, without Squall. But he had gone, managing to take himself backwards, right to the beginning, to see Ultemecia finally die. I guess someone had to make sure the bitch hadn't just sloped off to recover and attack again. It wasn't until he returned to the blackness, a blackness I had never left, that I realised he did, somewhere, still love me. Why else would I still have been there?

_It doesn't matter who's to blame_

We found each other, in the endless desert, and for a while we were content in each other. Content just to hold each other close, and to let the relief that it was all over finally surface. We were crying as the desert bloomed around us, and the dark skies were speared by sunlight, bleeding a brilliant blue that was a pale reflection of our happiness.

_Forget all the tears lost in the rain_

But of course, life isn't a fairy tale. The happy ending never lasts more than a few seconds. The world wanted someone to blame, someone alive whom they could vent their anger on. And I suddenly seemed to have a target painted on my back. Squall… My lion was my staunchest supporter. He soundly berated Quistis, and the rest of Garden, for thinking that in my place they would have been stronger. Surprisingly Rinoa also supported me, more of a help than I might have thought since she too had been under Ultemecia's control, and could honestly say that I didn't stand a chance. I saw no good reason to correct the finer points of her argument… after all, one has to be alive to support an ego, and no one's ever been known to die for lack of one.

_Let's start the fight to win it back again_

Still, it's taken almost seven years for us to win official 'pardons' from every government in the world. The easiest was Galbadia, which surprised me, but then, Esthar was right behind them (not a surprise given Laguna Loire, the president of all people, is Squall's father), and probably leaned on them a bit. Maybe more than a bit. For all he gives the impression of being a moron, Laguna, Kiros and Ward make a formidable diplomatic team.

_Or we'll become lost souls in lover's ocean_

And me and Squall? Well, it was tough for the first few years. We had to keep our relationship secret out of necessity. We couldn't expect even our closest friends to cope with Squall's defence of me and the revelation that we'd been lovers for years. Things were very strained for a while. Then, of course, we can never let slip that, at the beginning at least, I was in control. Selphie might not kill me, but she would never forgive me, and Irvine would follow her lead. Zell and Quistis would never be able to look me in the eye again.

_We've seen too much to let it be forgotten_

We've both left SeeD, drifted out of touch of most people. We live out in the wilds of Esthar, and no one bothers us unless it's Quistis or Laguna checking that we're OK and don't need anything. The answer is always no. SeeD taught us self-sufficiency, and whilst we're not in danger of obesity, we're not wasting away either. Nightmares come frequently enough still that we both look and feel haunted. Some days I'll swear it's the proximity of Lunatic Pandora, but then weeks will go by without a single episode for either of us.

All in all, I think we're lucky to have done as well as we have. I mean, I in particular am lucky to still be breathing, and I'm doubly lucky that Squall still loves me as much as he does…

* * *

A man was sitting in a rocking chair, watching them as they approached the shack. They were in the middle of nowhere, well, the middle of the West Abadon Plains to be precise. But it might as well have been nowhere. There was nothing out here except monsters…and this rough, but solidly built, shack.

As they drew closer they began to doubt their first impressions of the place, and the man seated easily in the chair. Both were old, probably as old as each other, but the man had not aged as they were used to seeing people age. They both had grandparents, wrinkled and frail people on whom the skin no longer seemed to fit correctly, and whose hair had finally given up the fight against time and departed, leaving their scalps bare.

But the blond, for blond he clearly was, had neither lost the colour of his hair nor lost the hair itself. As for his skin, it was tanned a dark bronze by long years of exposure to the harsh Estharian sun, and the only wrinkles were creases worn by long years of frowning and laughing. He did not rock in the chair, the arms of which were worn smooth by long hard years of use, and his gleaming jade eyes did not waver in their piercing gaze.

Still they approached, intrigued by the enigmas he presented. And now the weapon at his side caught the light, a flash of blinding white that halted them in their tracks with a gasp, for everyone knew the legends of the blade known as Hyperion, and its owner, Seifer Almasy. And as they looked up at the sorceress's knight himself, he smirked, just as he always had, and they turned and fled for their lives.

A laugh escaped him then, the same old Almasy guffaw that had once haunted the corridors of Balamb Garden. The chair rocked once as a breeze blew from nowhere. Seifer waited, patiently.

_What are you still doing here?_ Was it the breeze that whispered with the voice of his lover? Was it a phantom in his head? He gazed sadly over at the small fenced area to the left of the shack as he answered.

"Penance." And the tears escaped him then, as he gazed at the small cross marking the grave of his lover, long gone, and yet still with him. For that was the burden that Seifer had accepted, to guard the remains of Lunatic Pandora until the world was old and wise enough to discover it once more. And so he lingered, unchanging, with Hyperion ever by his side, watching the world as it changed, with only the ghost of his lover to ease his burden.

_We gotta hold on (hold on)  
We can make it through the storm  
Baby it's been so long (so long)  
Since the feeling was so right  
I know we can make it strong  
For I have seen the signs  
In my heart you still belong  
Gotta keep holding on_

AN: ugh…don't particularly like the ending of this… it seems to be trying to develop a plot, and it's not supposed to… hehe, anyway, kinda reflective, kinda sad, kinda funny at one point… kinda angsty… kinda everything really ;)

Apologies to the English language for the over-use of the word 'and' as a start to sentences…just kept happening :p And I can't be bothered to change it

RxR, CxC, Flames, Fan Mail (Ok, I'm pushing it now xx) most gratefully welcome.


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